TOWNSEND AND ALLEN: LABRADOR BIRDS. 
337 
American Eider. They both fly in flocks, and as a rule the two 
species do not mingle (Stearns). Under date of April 7, 1775, at 
Charles Harbor, Cartwright records: “Also one flock of King-ducks, 
which are the first I have heard of this year.” It is found in winter 
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if there is any open water. 
We saw only two King Eiders on the Labrador coast. The first 
was an adult male on the shore at the mouth of St. Louis Inlet on 
July 13th. As we approached in a sail-boat he waddled down to the 
water and swam off. His light color and cocked up tail suggested a 
gull, but with glasses we could make out the characteristic spectacle 
side-face markings and projection over the bill. In flight he showed 
dark on his back posteriorly and light wings. In diving he opened 
his wings for subaqueous flight. The second bird, apparently in 
immature plumage, was seen between Fanny’s Harbor and Nain. 
Oidemia americana Swains. 
American Scoter; “ Butter-bill Coot.” 
Common transient visitor, rare summer resident. 
As all the Scoters are frequently found in summer sometimes in 
considerable numbers far south of their breeding grounds even to the 
Massachusetts and Rhode Island coast, it is never safe to record the 
breeding range of these birds except by the discovery of their nests, 
eggs, or ducklings. Cooke (’06, p. 59) says of this bird: “The lack of 
information in regard to the breeding of this species in northeastern 
North America is surprising. The species was described from the west 
shore of Hudson Bay, and occurs on the coasts of Labrador and the 
Gulf of St. Lawrence, but there seems to be no record of the discovery 
of the nest in this region. Nonbreeding birds are known to occur far 
south of the breeding grounds. The species is unknown from the 
whole vast interior of North America, between Hudson Bay on the 
east and the Yukon Valley on the west, and south almost to the 
United States boundary; it ranges north to Ungava Bay, Hudson 
Strait, and Fort Churchill, Hudson Bay, and apparently does not 
breed south of Newfoundland, nor in Labrador south of about latitude 
52°; so that it follows by exclusion that the multitudes of these ducks 
that winter from the Gulf of St. Lawrence south along the Atlantic 
coast must breed in northern Ungava. 
“The American scoter is much more abundant on the Pacific coast, 
